Memoirs of a Church Cultivator, part 7: the Shocking Letter

When I last wrote about the cultivation of Kailua Baptist, I said we received a shocking letter in the mail in late 2013. It was probably a couple months or so after our terrible members meeting. After that terrible meeting, and then at least a couple more hard meetings where we let members “air out” their differences, I said we would have a vote to simply decide ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether we would even go in the direction of having a plurality of elders in our church. Just yes or no. Not voting on specific men for eldership. Not voting on a revised version of the bylaws. Just yes- we will go in the direction of eldership, or no- we will not.

Shortly before that meeting to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’, I received a letter in the church office from the Attorney General’s office of Hawaii. I did not know we had such a thing before that day! The letter stated that we had an anonymous member complaining about the way we were operating, that we were about to make changes that were not in line with our bylaws. I was accused of saying we were going to change our bylaws at the next meeting– which again, we were not going to vote on any change to the bylaws, but simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on direction.

The Attorney General asked for the minutes from our different members meetings (before that day, I didn’t think it was important to have minutes for your meetings– before that day), and any other things that could show what kind of things we were communicating to the church. Apparently, in cases like this, if you are not operating according to your own bylaws, you could be in danger of losing your non-profit status, or be fined, or who knows?

Regardless, we knew we weren’t doing anything wrong, so we sent in minutes from the members’ meetings over that previous year, and emails that had gone out about what was happening. We never heard back from the AG office on that issue (I came to find out later, we satisfied the complaint from the AG’s perspective, though she never wrote back to say anything. Why couldn’t she have told us that?!)

After that, we had to address it with our members. We were not, and to this day are not, 100% certain who wrote that letter. We had a big, big hunch, and Pastor Reid actually asked our suspected couple point blank! They denied it, but continued to act mischievously to keep the suspicion raised in our minds. Whoever did it directly violated God’s Word in 1 Corinthians 6, where God commands saints to not go to outsiders to settle disputes within the church.

I brought up to our members 1 Corinthians 6, and pleaded with the anonymous member to confess. I offered forgiveness for whoever it was. No one ever came forward. Out of the few members we suspected, every single one left our church over the next year. Besides 1 Corinthians 6, there are all kinds of things wrong with whoever wrote that letter, a mindset that violates principles of godliness like the family aspect of the church, obeying your leaders, gossip/slander, and a whole host of other things. Because of all that, I am so deathly afraid to this day for whoever wrote that letter (by the way, two months later a second letter came from the AG with another false accusation from the same person, still anonymous, and we had to produce more paperwork to resolve that one).

I still, today, would forgive that person if they would repent. May God have mercy on their souls.

One last hard thing that I can remember happened at the end of 2013, something that really shaped me for the good. To this point, I believe I had been largely “in the right.” I was working patiently and courageously as far as I could tell. That is, until I got a little impatient and cowardly. Who knew what clicking “send” could do? Well, I found out soon enough.

Why ever do a live-stream sermon?

Sorry for the longest cliff-hanger ever with the “church cultivator” series. None of you are even hanging anymore. You’ve probably climbed up and forgot about that cliff. Sorry, I will return to that in the coming days, Lord willing. I just wrote this up for my church, and wanted to share, with the current strange season we all find ourselves in. I had to cancel our worship service tomorrow, but will plan to do live-stream preaching. Here is why:

For those who know me well, you know I am against video preaching on Sunday mornings. The reason I am against that is because the word “church” simply means “assembly.” And you are not a true NT local church unless you are gathered physically. On top of that, there are elements of worship like singing to one another (Ephesians 5.19) and praying together (Matthew 18.20) and partaking of the Lord’s Supper together (1 Corinthians 10.16-17) that are essential to what it means to be a real assembly of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the ignorance of these things today that has led to so many professing Christians believing that they can be a faithful Christian without being a committed member of a Christian church.

On top of all that, video preaching (which happens in TONS of churches across the land) feeds into all kinds of bad things (including, but not limited to): it doesn’t matter if the preacher really knows you or not; celebrity culture; over-dependence on one man in any ministry; pragmatism in general. So for all those reasons, please know that video preaching is not what the normal Christian life is supposed to look like.

Obviously, with coronavirus, or any other pandemic, we are not talking about the “normal” Christian life. My motivation for streaming a live sermon at the normal time each Sunday for the next few weeks: because God has called me to feed the flock. I love doing it. I believe it’s my job. I believe KBC loves my preaching (as a rule of thumb, maybe, most weeks? At least most of them?) And by God’s grace, we have the technological capability to do live-stream preaching!

Some public voices have said: “We ought to encourage family worship at a time like this! Not video preaching!” “It’s bad if the church has to depend on you at a time like this! Fathers ought to be equipped to lead their families in worship!”

I get it. But I don’t think that thinking is correct. We ought to encourage family worship six other days a week. This is not about depending on one man to feed the flock; this is about me standing before God and giving account for whether I tried to feed the flock night and day with tears, even in the midst of a pandemic. The Lord’s Day is not just another day; so if there is a way to salvage elements of church life in the midst of a pandemic, why not?

I want to be clear that this is not going to be an option for our members (or anybody else) in the future, during normal times. What we will be doing for the next few Sundays is not replacing our normal Lord’s Day gathering. KBC’s Lord’s Day gatherings are cancelled for the time being. What we will be doing for the next few Sundays is allowing our members to still hear faithful preaching by their pastor. That’s not sinful. But that’s also all it is.

It’s not ideal for me to preach to a camera! But I am preaching with the knowledge that all our members (who can get on the internet at 10:45am on a Sunday) will be listening. I will be preaching with them in mind as I do every Sunday. When other churches normally do video preaching and call it “church,” they are missing out on some essential elements of church life. The fact that Kailua Baptist is a church frees us up at a moment like this to go off the norm with preaching and still get a lot of benefits that we would normally get on Sunday mornings through preaching. Because I know the people I am preaching to. They know me. This is my ministry to them.

So please pray as you normally would for preachers on Sunday to preach the Word in power. And thank God that we live in a time that not even the worst parts of the Curse can stop the proclamation of the gospel from feeding your souls. Satan cannot even stop pastors specifically from feeding their specific flocks.

Memoirs of a Church Cultivator, part 6: the Explosive Meeting

August 11, 2013 is a date etched in my memory. I don’t want to be over-dramatic, but maybe the reason I have never been able to forget it is because it was perhaps the first time it became publicly clear that we had severe problems at our church.

The meeting was a regular quarterly members meeting. Six months earlier, at the first quarter meeting, I had presented to the congregation new bylaws and (according to those new bylaws were they to pass) the first set of elders and deacons. I told them at that meeting we would vote at the third quarter meeting. There were many conversations along the way, quite a few disagreements, but overall it seemed everything was headed in a good direction. I thought I had been as much of an open book about all the issues along the way, including revising the bylaws page by page and allowing the members feedback after each page was revised.

What also added to the drama of the afternoon was we had several new members join that year, Christians who had never been in a healthy church and I was eager for them to see what biblical, Reformed, healthy church life could look like at our church.

Three months leading up to the meeting we had our second quarter meeting. I again told everyone we were going to vote on the new bylaws and potential officers at the third quarter meeting. No real issues came up.

August 11, 2013. Third Quarter meeting. I opened by saying we were voting on the new bylaws and new officers (potentially). I handed out all the ballots. Then I asked if there were any final questions. And a long time member made her way immediately up to the front with papers in her hand.

It may have been one sheet of paper, I’m not sure. But she proceeded to read a letter to the members and stated that I had deviously changed the bylaws, that I did not give the members enough opportunity to give input, and that I was doing harm to the church by changing the leadership structure.

She probably spoke for about five minutes, but I had thousands of thoughts running through my mind all at once, and can’t remember much else of what she said or what I was thinking. All I remember at that point, when she got done, I asked if there were any members who wanted to respond to her statements.

One of the men I was recommending for eldership stood up immediately, and instead of addressing her concerns, he simply said, “we should submit to our pastor.”

Then another man stood up immediately and said, “I need to address that. If we just blindly follow our leaders, that’s how you become a cult…”

With the quick loss of control that I now had in my hands, and with that last offensive comment, I spoke up from up front–interrupting the last speaker!– “alright, brother, I gotta stop you there. That cult statement is simply offensive. We believe cults are going to hell. So you cannot compare us to a cult.”

I don’t remember what happened from there. There was probably about five more minutes of discussion and I tabled the vote. Many who were for the changes were surprised that I tabled it. But I simply did not want to “win” a vote with so much divisiveness in the room.

I totally believe it was right to table at that moment. I am not sure if I was right to interrupt the cult commentary the way I had (a move for which his wife never forgave me as far as I can tell). I am not sure if the process I went through to change the bylaws was correct. But this was where God had us providentially. And we clearly had some major problems on our hand.

Our new members were so confused. Our old members who were for the changes were so offended by the first woman’s comments. And lots of people were angry at me and each other for what transpired in that meeting.

I decided to go even slower than we had been going. We had more members meetings to talk about issues, attempt to reconcile relationships, while still trying to move toward biblical change. We eventually got around to creating a bylaws committee to work from scratch to re-write our bylaws.

I did learn that it is possible to look like things are going in the right direction, but unless you really get every member to buy in, every member to understand, every member to have affection for your teachings, you are just one meeting away from ecclesiological disaster.

I also learned that no matter how patient and loving you are toward the sheep, the reality is in a fallen world, on this side of the Second Coming, and in this world where “many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” but not enter the kingdom– the reality is sometimes there are false sheep among the flock. Sometimes wolves. Sometimes simply false sheep. And one more terrible action by a false sheep awaited, which we found out when we received “The Shocking Letter.”

Memoirs of a church cultivator, part 5: the Failed Vote

From day one I tried to teach the importance of church membership. Baptist churches– particularly Southern Baptist churches– are famous for having meaningless church membership practices. Case in point: I just saw a list of Southern Baptist churches on Oahu, and I saw one church with over a thousand members!!! Let me assure you there are no mega Southern Baptist churches on Oahu. (from what I hear that church has more like 100-150 active members)

When I got to KBC I actually had no idea if there was an official roll besides our membership directory that has the pictures and contact info of all the Christians who gathered regularly with us (I’ve since found out there is a roster in our office kept since the 50’s, but no one ever used it; we still log stuff in there, but just for legal records). I chose to operate from day one with the directory as our official membership roster, and everyone was happy with that.

At some point in the first two years, I had talked about removing a couple who had stopped coming for a while. The deacons agreed with me. I did not moderate the meetings at the time; one of our deacons did. He led the members meeting in which we voted to remove that one couple. I believe I did some explanation of why they were going to be removed (I actually can’t remember how the whole process went down; all I know is at some point I talked to that couple on the phone and told them they needed to come back but they were unwilling, and I told them if they didn’t we would remove them).

At the meeting, the deacon brought up the couple’s names, asked for a vote, and it passed. No problem. (I bet you thought it wasn’t going to pass)

Later I realized that even though I thought I did my due diligence (and I may have), there were many that were still not clear on that situation.

About a year later, we baptized a young couple. I was thrilled. It was one of the first baptisms that I ever did. But then about six months later they stopped coming to church. After many conversations it was clear they were forsaking the fellowship of believers. After I met with them, then after one or two others tried to meet with them, I decided to put them forward for excommunication. It seemed like a no brainer to me, especially after I thought we were already prepped from the first couple that was removed.

On the day of the vote, there were 30-40 voting members present from what I could tell. I asked for a raise of hands. About 10-15 raised their hands to vote to remove. Then I asked for those not in favor to raise their hands. No one raised their hands. Then I asked for abstentions (which I don’t do anymore) but only one person raised her hand. I had a hundred thoughts running through my mind all at once; I am not even sure how accurate I am with these numbers right now because of how many thoughts were racing through my mind.

I asked for another vote and asked every voting member to please vote. All in favor? About 10-15 again. All opposed? 0. Any abstaining? 1.

People were confused. I was confused. I said we would table the issue. Church life went on. I continued to preach the gospel. And we were going to be fine. But it was clear a lot of work on my part needed to be done. In fact, as I remember, I think I said, “I will just take it as me failing to teach on this issue; I take the blame for any confusion here.”

I came to find out later that many were unsure of why we were voting out someone who simply stopped coming to church. I found out the first vote was not all that clear to everyone. We had actually just done an “aye” vs “nay” vote the first time. And if 10-15 people say “aye” and no one says “nay” it sounds like a successful vote. And at the end of the day, the first vote just may have felt more like a formality to many instead of actual, serious church excommunication.

Some lessons learned:

• Many members will not want to vote against the pastor. There is good in that. But teaching members even what voting means can help. I suggest doing away with ‘abstentions.’ If a member of the church chooses not to follow their pastor(s) they ought to be very clear that is what they are doing. And there are many cases where they can have very good biblical reasons for doing so. But to abstain is to not obey your leaders and submit to them. Again, there are good reasons to not follow your leaders for conscience sake. You just better have good reasons
• Teach, teach, teach on church membership. And keep teaching it. And never stop. The first vote “succeeded” because I didn’t teach enough. The second vote failed for the same reason. Unless Christians understand what church membership is biblically, there is no sense in doing anything to your membership rolls one way or another. (I hear of lots of new pastors wanting to “clean up their rolls”; there is not biblical success in any cleaning up of rolls if there is not biblical understandings of church membership; I fear there is a facade of success in many “church revitalization” situations when it comes to “cleaning up rosters”)
• Whether I went in the wisest order or not, it definitely helps when a pastor can say “we, the elders, recommend…” instead of “I recommend.” I knew having a plurality of elders would help with things like this. To that process of moving the church toward plural elders I now turn. But that process had lots of bumps along the way. First bump: the Explosive Meeting

Baptism of children, part 11

This is the conclusion to this series. I don’t think any of this series is earth-shattering at all. But I do think many of these issues are taken for granted in many churches, and where these issues are taken for granted, you can be sure that there are more people who do certain things for the wrong reasons. And that includes baptism.

I also think many churches simply disagree with some of these posts. And where that happens, you can be sure that there are false professions of faith.

All these posts taken together are meant to paint a picture of a faithful, Reformed church. And in that context, you can have much more confidence that the profession of faith of younger children are true professions than in non-Reformed churches.

The last reason you can have more confidence of any profession of faith in a Reformed church context is because of the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on theologically rich worship. You have been hiding under a rock or have had your head stuck in the sand if you have not noticed the broader evangelical church’s trend toward theologically-lite worship. In my opinion, light theology is a contradiction to pure worship.

One example: one of the most popular Christian songs in recent years is a song that talks about God having “reckless love.” And everyone goes back and forth on whether that is a valid description of God’s love. READ SOME THEOLOGY, PEOPLE! There is a reason the Christian church has never used any words that communicate what “reckless” communicates. You want to say “merciful” or “unbelievable” or “unfathomable” or “powerful”– awesome. But sound theology does not allow us to uphold the thought that there is anything “reckless” in God, much less His love (by the way “God is love”; to call His love “reckless” is to say “God is reckless”– may God have mercy).

The desire to use a word like “reckless” in worship is because of a desire to be poetic in combination with a desire to be catchy and a desire to communicate one truth at the expense of other truths. That is a toxic combination. And it is, by definition, immature theology.

Rich theology in worship means a worship gathering will involve lots of Scripture reading, weighty prayers, songs that dive deep into the riches of God’s Word, and preaching that will always challenge every soul to grow (in other words, preaching always has to be above people’s heads on some level–always). Imagine a seven year old sitting through that kind of worship for three years– the weight of God’s glory and the unsearchable riches of Christ being pressed upon their soul week in and week out– and at the end of three years they say, “I want to follow Jesus!”

We in Hawaii are always relatively near water. What prevents them from being baptized?

Baptism of Children, part 10

We can be confident that a young person professing faith in a Reformed church has a credible profession because of the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on family worship. I don’t know about you, but I never heard of the term “family worship” until I went to seminary. Not that it was an absolutely foreign concept, but surely a foreign term, and undoubtedly an un-emphasized practice. As much as I love my dad, and am thankful for the way God used him to lead me to Christ, I know he did not lead us in family worship as he ought to.

But that’s because we never grew up in a Reformed church!!! The Westminster Assembly actually wrote up a document called “the Directory for Family Worship” in the 1600’s. And it is gold! Read it when you can.

Family worship helps our children see that Jesus is Lord everyday, not just on Sunday mornings. It helps them get used to sitting and being reverent and behaving and listening to the Word of God. You can also use the time to teach children theological concepts that will help them to engage better on Sunday mornings, as well as practice reading and praying out loud. In short, the more ministry of the Word happens in our homes, the more the ministry of the Word on Sundays is supported, and the more exposure there is to the means of God’s grace to convert sinners.

If the only time our children are engaging in worship is Sunday morning, it is still possible for them to be converted. That’s how powerful the Word of God is. But I am less confident in a child’s profession in those cases. But where Christ rules in the home as well, we can be sure the Spirit of God will work in the way He says He will (Romans 10.13-17, 1 Peter 1.3-25). And if a child sits under the serious ministry of the Word week in and week out, and sits under a similar ministry of the Word day in and day out, is it so surprising if they want to follow the Lord Jesus in baptism?

Baptism of Children, part 9

You can be confident about a child’s profession of faith in a Reformed church because of the Reformed Tradition’s emphasis on children in worship. I don’t care what kind of revisionist history you come up with, if you grew up in the late 20th century or the first decade of the 21st, unless you were in a Reformed church, you did not think much about this issue.

I am thankful for the Family-Integrated Church movement. Though I disagree with them on several things, they did help me in particular to think about this issue when I had not been doing so before. And what I found out was that the Reformed tradition has always believed children of all ages should be involved in corporate worship.

The biblical evidence is overwhelming for children (even infants!) being involved in corporate worship: Exodus 12.1-28, Deuteronomy 4.9-11, Deuteronomy 6.1-9, Deuteronomy 31.9-13, Psalm 78, Ezra 10.1, Nehemiah 12.43, Joel 2.12-17, Acts 2.42, Acts 16.33, Ephesians 6.1-3.

What you most definitely will not find in the Bible is any teaching on “Make sure you get the children away from the room when the sermon starts!”

I’m not saying there is not some wiggle room for freedom. I’m not saying this is easy. I’m not saying I have it all figured out.

I am saying that Christians should teach their children to worship God and listen to the preaching of the Word. It takes training and hard work and discipline and prayer. But if a 7 year old has sat under the preaching of the Word for almost 5 years, has seen the preacher’s pleas, has heard the songs and prayers of the saints, has become acquainted with the creeds and confessions and catechisms of the Church, has seen the Lord’s Supper observed each week, and week by week, month by month, year by year, has grasped a little bit more of who God is, what sin is, who Jesus is, and how we can be saved– is it really that surprising they may express faith, and that faith be real?

Baptism of Children, part 8

In a Reformed church, we can be fairly confident that a child who desires baptism is desiring it for the right reasons because of the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on a serious and explicit church membership. This is actually completely overlapping with the emphasis on the Lord’s Supper, but because there really is more to church membership than participating in Communion, it is worth pointing out.

Church membership is really the meaning of church discipline. The Reformers all saw the right preaching and the right administration of the Sacraments as the marks of a true church. They mostly all saw church discipline as the third mark.

Church membership is an area in which I would say Baptists in particular (and even more particularly, Reformed Baptists) have made the greatest contribution in the Reformed tradition. We believe God marks the Church off from the world. There is a “who is” and “who is not” when it comes to the church.

The Church is marked by a confession of faith in Jesus as Lord, marked by regeneration, marked by fruit of the Spirit, marked by forgiveness of sins, marked by holiness, marked by all kinds of evidences of grace. The church is the workmanship of Christ Jesus who walks in good works. The church is the household of God.

And the world is not marked by those things.

This is the main reason I have settled on the Baptist position versus the Presbyterian position (and I think I like more Presbyterian preachers than Baptist preachers)- but we believe every single person we baptize has all those things in the previous full paragraph. In that way, baptism is God’s way of marking off His people from the world through the hands of the Church.

So if every single week we are teaching that the church is a defined people (as defined above), and if you’re not a part of the church you are going to hell (which is what not having all those things means), and in light of all that a child says they want to obey Jesus as Lord in baptism, how strange to tell them “not yet.”*

*I hope at this point it is clear that if your church is not being clear about all these doctrines, then even I might tell the child “not yet”

Baptism of Children, part 7

We can be confident in a Reformed church about a child’s profession of faith because of the Reformed tradition’s emphasis on a careful administration of the Lord’s Supper. Any church that makes clear that the Lord’s Supper is for believers and only for believers is way ahead of the ballgame in the evangelical world.

I remember visiting a mega-church once (I do not remember the occasion, we must have had a friend doing something during their service). And not that every mega-church is like this, but this experience was eye opening because I thought of this mega-church in particular as pretty faithful. We were late to service and were about to open one of the 20 doors to enter the auditorium, but one of the ushers carrying the Lord’s Supper elements came bursting out, as about 19 other ushers came out the other doors. They had just got done serving the Lord’s Supper inside. And just as we were passing each other the first thing out of his mouth was, “hello, you want communion?”

Thankfully, we declined (not even having as much clarity on this issue back then as we do now). Without us having been in the room when the explanation for Communion happened, without ever having met us before, without any explanation to us about how to revere the Lord’s Table, we were offered bread and juice as if, in the words of a preacher I just heard, this was just “church snack time.”

Paul says to the Corinthians, because of the way they were unloving towards each other during Communion, “it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.” It is possible to mess up Communion so badly, that it is not even Communion with Christ anymore!

By God’s grace, Reformed churches have consistently tried to “fence the Table,” promote the Table as a real means of grace, and explain how those who take it in an unworthy manner are living like unbelievers, and are worthy of death. It helps to guard against any child possibly only wanting to get baptized because they want to participate in “church snack time.”

And yes, you might fence the Table properly each week, and a kid might just ignore it and still desire baptism for the wrong reasons. But is that not possible for any human being?

The flip side is: if you call people to come to Christ each week, and call Christians to the Table each week, and make unbelievers feel like they are outsiders because they are not welcome to the Table each week, and a child in your church who hears the gospel, is convicted of their sin, and wants to commune with Christ in that way comes to you and says, “I want to follow Jesus in baptism,” how odd to say “let’s wait.”

Baptism of children, part 4

The usual objection to all I have said thus far is “what if they’re not really saved?” or “what if they’re just saying what we want to hear?” or something along those lines. My response to anything like that is: “that is the reality for any adult too.” Let us not set double standards.

Sometimes the hesitancy comes in the form of “but they’re just not ready.” And I just want to know what people mean by “ready.” The only “readiness” needed for Christian baptism is faith in the Lord Jesus (remember this is a Baptist post). So if what people mean by “not ready” is “I don’t think they’re a Christian,” fine. But surely we cannot wait until we are 100% sure. Or even 95% sure. Or even 90% sure.

We can only go by someone’s profession of faith and corresponding credibility of that profession. And if there is no obvious, unrepentant sin, then how can we withhold the baptismal waters? If a child sits under the preaching of the gospel for even a year, hears about the holiness of God, hears about their own sin, hears about the glorious work of Christ, and then constantly hears the call to faith and repentance and baptism, is it a shock that a six year old will desire baptism?

For the rest of this series, let me propose to you why the Reformed Faith offers the best context for baptizing young believers. The Reformed Tradition should be a comfort to any parent who is hesitant about their child desiring baptism. To be clear, here is the type of scenario I am envisioning: a child under 10 years old has been sitting in the entire worship service for about a year, his/her family has been committed to this church for a little longer than that, and over the last few weeks the child has been asking mom and dad if they can be baptized too. How do I know if this is prompted by the Holy Spirit or not?

Let me tell you why you can have much more confidence this is of the Lord if this is a Reformed Church. It is because of the Reformed Tradition’s emphasis on:

• the right preaching of the gospel every single Sunday
• a careful administration of baptism
• a careful administration of the Lord’s Supper
• a serious and explicit teaching on church membership
• children in worship
• family worship
• theologically rich worship

All these taken together made us not only comfortable, but eager to have our 8 year old baptized last year. Let’s tackle each of these one by one